Being Prepared

I once met a man who told me that while he was in college, he took a short spout as a vegetarian. He would go months without eating meat but then every now and then he would get a craving that he just couldn't deny. He would roll through a fast food joint, grab a hamburger, and then go park his car in a parking lot and eat it. He said he would feel immense shame and did not want anybody to know that he was eating meat. We of course laughed at the story and I wondered why it was that he was so ashamed. Lots of people eat meat, I said it’s not like he owed anything to anybody. He could be as much of a vegetarian, carnivore, omnivore, or whatever he wanted to be. But from what I gathered, there’s something that hurts us inside when who we want to be, say we are, and are...don’t line up.

I had a similar experience to this when I was in high school. A friend and I decided that we were going to take part in a 24 hour fast together. We would hold each other accountable to the fast and both learn from the experience. So we got together for dinner that night. Afterwards, we went and did something very active. I can’t quite remember what we did, but it was something like playing soccer for an hour or so. After that, we were of course hungry because we were high school boys who had just run around for hours. But we stuck to our word. We both ended up sleeping at his house that night and didn’t get a lot of sleep since we wanted to hang out, stay up late, and watch movies.

The next day we woke up tired and hungry. I left fairly soon because all we could think about is that you are supposed to eat breakfast in the morning, and we were just left to stare at each other, wallowing in our hunger. Tangent, yes I understand that this is not a long time to go without eating in comparison to the rest of the world. But anytime you are purposely skipping meals for “spiritual growth” you tend to think about it and your body starts telling you, ”Hey, this is when we eat!”

I had to go to band practice and ended up having a terrible practice. Everyone in the band made a bunch of popcorn which smelled so good. You always know when somebody in your office is making popcorn because it ruminates throughout the building and you just want to know if you can have some. While everyone laughed and ate their popcorn, I got mad and ended up having a terrible practice and getting mad at my friends in the band. On my way home from practice with about 6 hours left to go in my fast...I couldn’t take it anymore. The McDonald's on the way home might as well have been calling my name. At this point, I wanted everything on the menu and I’m sure I ordered just short of that. I went and ate in my car in the parking lot and felt so much guilt. Why did I feel guilty though? I eat all the time, why was this different than any other time? It’s because it didn’t line up with who I said I would be that day. The next day I saw my friend and he said that he couldn’t make it either and ended up eating way too much as well. We both felt the shame of not living up to who we wanted to be.

I told this story to another friend and he told me that I didn’t fail because the fast was hard. I failed because I didn’t set myself up well. I exercised way more than I should have if I wasn’t going to be giving myself food. I stayed up terribly late and didn’t get a lot of sleep. I then went and surrounded myself by other people who were eating tasty snacks. It wasn’t the fast that was the problem, it was all the other factors that I put around myself. But what ended up happening was I cursed the fast. I cursed the goal. The fast had gotten in my way of eating and enjoying myself. However, I now see that wasn’t the truth. Other factors got in the way of who I said I would be. I understand that sometimes we may not amount up to who we want to be but I think it is important to note at what cost do we find ourselves falling short of our goals. For me, it was running around too much and staying up too late. Perhaps I’d have been willing to compromise my goal for something greater, but looking back, I don’t remember what movie we watched that night and I don’t even remember what game we played. All I remember is that I fell short.

Another goal that I took on about six months ago was in my workout routine. I committed to doing 20 squats per week, starting with just below my body weight, and adding 5 pounds each week. It was always a very miserable process, but the idea was that if I only added 5 pounds a week I could be lifting twice my body weight in just a few months and doing it at 20 reps! If you aren’t familiar with squatting, you can look it up on YouTube and understand that repeating the motion 20 times is grueling on ones body.

Each week I pretty much never wanted  to do the squats. I liked being able to say that I had done them and I liked that it made me stronger, but while I was in the middle of them, I thought it was hell. Now, I had a very specific routine I did in order to prepare myself for the 20 reps. I would get to the gym and warm up my legs with some box jumps. Then I would superset hamstring curls and leg extensions at 50 reps each for three sets at a very light weight. This would get my hamstrings and quadriceps nice and fired and ready to work. Then I would head over to the squat rack and do about 5 reps with just the 45 pound bar. Then I would do 5 reps with 95 pounds on the bar, to warm up a bit more. After that I would do 3-4 reps with 135 pounds, just so my body wouldn’t be shocked to go from 95 pounds to 175 and I could feel some weight on my back. At this point I would usually nervously jump and think about how much I didn’t want to do it until I got myself under the bar, lifted and said, “It will be over in a minute. It will be over in a minute. Just keep going, it will be over in a minute. God this is awful.” And I always did it. Except once I failed at 15 reps, but we won’t talk about that. But the key to success wasn’t in just trying for the goal, it came in the preparation. And the preparation was more extensive than when I got to the gym. I had to have something on my stomach. Something with some protein, carbs, and I probably needed some caffeine. And, I needed a good night sleep the night before. You see, I always succeeded (except for once) because I did everything to gear up towards success. I’m sure that if I had gone straight from McDonald's and tried to succeed, I wouldn’t have done it. Which is fine, because nobody else at the gym was doing what I was doing. Nobody expected it of me. But I gave my word, and said that’s who I wanted to be. And your word to who you want to be is important, even if it’s only to yourself.

Riding The Bus

*I wrote this one time when I had only been awake for about three minutes. I guess I have less of a filter at 7 am. I could edit it, but somebody told me to try writing right when I woke up, this is what we got*

Once upon a time I had to ride the bus. Well, had to makes me sound like a martyr. I got to ride the bus? I suppose got to makes it sounds nice. I paid the city of Denver and they would send a person to pick up me and a bunch of other people and drive me around. I (insert completely neutral verb) to ride the bus.

It’s rare that I really desire to start a conversation with somebody in such a setting. Nobody ever has anything good to say and is just talking for their own benefit. With the crowd that rode my bus, this was probably because their brain was fried from drugs and they had no social cues. Now, if I was reading a book and somebody noted how they had read that book, I would most likely be happy to have a conversation. I think you need to identify some point of common ground in starting a conversation. I once sparked the interest of a young woman on the bus based on the fact that we were both white and there was rarely anybody who was white on the bus. I received her phone number under the guise of a business contact and we went to coffee and talked about work for three minutes and then our social lives. But hey, in the moment, being white was unique enough to build a connection.

I was never sure if I liked the bus or not. I liked decompressing after work on my way home, that was for sure. One thing that I hated was waiting for the bus. I hate waiting for anything. I knew that it took me 2 minutes to get to the bus stop from my house if I jogged. This meant leaving the house every day at 7:07 to catch the 7:09. If the bus driver had been comfortable with me hopping on without the bus stopping as it turned the corner, I would have done so as to facilitate a speedy transition.

One day, a woman at the front of the bus was going on about how hard her life was and how she was going back to school and trying to raise her kids. At this point I was able to take a break from thinking about sports and not talking to everybody in order to listen to her. Well, I was more forced to take this break. Perhaps a stronger man could have continued in his thoughts while she yelled, but I was not that man.

At this point in my life I received some smug sense of satisfaction from printing off parts of scripture at work and taking it home with me. This was before I had a bible phone, so this helped me read the bible on the bus.

I don’t know why, but I decided that I wanted to give her some money. I don’t think it was much, maybe 40 or 60 dollars. When she got off the bus, I walked up to her and said, “excuse me ma’am, this is yours.” I had enclosed the money in the 15 or so pages that contained whatever section of the Gospel I was reading at the time. She didn’t even look me in the eye, said “thank you,” took it and walked off. As if it was indeed something she had dropped earlier or we had some prearranged meeting on the bus for me to give her something that was due to her. I derive all of those conclusions based on the sense she gave me that she deserved what I was giving her.

It sort of made me angry. I mean, I don’t know what I was expecting. I was just going off of a little intuition that perhaps she needed the pick me up or a little help. I think I always want this moment where I do something brief that hits the nail right on the head. You know, like walking up to a stranger and saying, “it wasn’t your fault and I am sure he loved you.” Then she breaks out into tears because that is what she has been needing to hear for the last 10 years. God, even my acts of giving are marred with selfishness.

I don’t know why I wrote about that today. Well, it actually came because I wrote down “once upon a time” and then tried to remember something that happened in my life that would fit in that scenario.

Give it a shot. Once upon a time...

10 Pound Bicep Curls

There’s this one bro that I always see at the gym. He kind of looks like me. He’s my height but the only difference is that there would have to be two of me to make him. He’s not fat, he’s just pure beef.

I usually like to watch the guys at the gym who are really strong and see what they are doing in their workouts. You know, try to pick up a few pointers from afar? A few things I’ve noticed is that it’s rare that they are on a machine, they incorporate a lot of body weight movements (pull ups and push ups), and here’s the biggest thing: don’t care what others think about what they are doing.

There are of course the strong guys who want everybody to be watching them and really care what others think of them. However, the overwhelming amount of tribal band tattoos, tapout shirts, and wrist/elbow bands plays trump to their muscular appearance and I no longer desire to look like them, thus have no pointers to pick up.

I digress.

Yesterday was a great example of this. I see this guy there all the time. I’m not sure if he lives there or not, but I definitely haven’t ruled it out. After I finished my set of, what I’m sure would only be the most impressive bench press one has ever seen, I checked to see what my friend might be doing. He was going bicep curls with 10 pound weights. He wasn’t doing the thing either where you look in the mirror and pretend like you hardly notice that you are moving weight. He was holding on to the top of the incline bench and pounding out as many bicep curls with this 10 pound dumbbell as he could, complete with sweat, groaning, and probably a little bit of resentment about how one time when he was a kid a coach told him he would never be good enough at football or something.

Most dudes wouldn’t grab the 10 pound dumbbells for anything, let alone bicep curls. Hell, I don’t like to grab less than 25. This guy was without a doubt the strongest guy in the room and he had the 10 pound weights. I’m not sure what he was trying to accomplish that day. Apparently he wanted to do something that would make him work for a long time at a light weight.

That day I understood why he was the strongest guy in the gym. It’s not necessarily because of the workouts he does. It’s because he walks in there and only cares about his goals. Not what others think of what he’s doing or what they think of his goals.

I know it’s just a gym and perhaps I’m being overly analytical. But I think that the way we exercise and treat our body has a lot to do with how we view and think of ourselves. It makes me wonder what I might be able to accomplish if my primary focus was betterment of myself for myself. Not for the approval of other men or to appear attractive to women, just for myself.

Life Update: Becoming Useful

Today is August 5th, 2013.  Thirty five months ago was the day that I packed up everything I owned and drove to Denver, Colorado along with my good friend Tyler, who would split the driving with me. Thanks again, pal...it was a long drive.

Let’s jump back for a minute to that time of life and make our way forward. I moved to Denver because I had never lived outside of Arizona in my whole life and wanted to try something new. I was offered a job at a company called Clayton Holdings as a Credit Risk Analyst. SPOILER ALERT: The job wasn't quite for me #tooextravertedfornumbers. Six months later was March 13th, I turned in my resignation, cut my hair into a mohawk, and started teaching guitar to kids. The mohawk and analyst job overlapped for a week but I dressed really nice that week as to distract everybody. “That cardigan is so nice I am sure that his hairstyle is completely business appropriate. I won’t even check.”

I thought that teaching guitar would be a job that just helped me pay some of my bills in a time of transition but proved to have a far greater effect on my life. As well, I also sought out an internship at a small church plant called Refuge Community Church and started helping to create an intentional community of ordinary radicals who would live communally in Denver. These were my two bigger passions: Church ministry and communal living.

It took about four months for us to find a house which ended up being at Federal and Alameda. If you’re not from Colorado, think of that one place of town where your parents wouldn’t want you to go when you were in high school. And you probably wouldn’t have been interested in going there either, because it wasn’t one of those hip and bad places to go. Well that’s Federal and Alameda. We later coined the phrase Culinary District to describe our neighborhood; a homage to the number of vietnamese restaurants in the area.

Moving on.

Jump to February 2013. Four of my roommates and I moved into a house that I am borrowing from the bank, in Englewood, a small little suburb of Denver. Yes, I own the house but it doesn’t really feel like you own it when the amount of money you owe is SOOOO much bigger than the amount of money you have already paid. I believe I own about a small section of the breakfast nook at this point.

As a community, we have seen our number of failures and successes. We still run our weekly  dinner night where everybody has one night a week they are to make dinner for the whole house. Different seasons have yielded different prayer meetings. There are a number of neighbors that we met, some that we have yet to meet, and others who we never did.

I still have a passion for community and believe that intentional living has the ability to change the church. Two years later I still don’t know exactly what that looks like. My prayer is that this isn’t just a two year experiment that has proved to be an exercise in futility. I would pray that we are still very much at the infancy of what has the potential to be a long lasting, well oiled machine for hope and change in a broken world.

Rewind to a few months ago. I believe it was February 12th. I found myself in a meeting room at First American TItle signing about 400 papers to purchase a house on South Inca street. I’m not sure if I was supposed to, but I kept the pen that I used to sign all my papers. It wasn’t completely full of ink but it probably had 75% left. I considered it a win and left the building.

(left to right) Nick, Colton, Jamie, Dave, and Bonnie all in Texas

Ten days later, my roommates and I had moved into the new house. I was and still am very grateful that they all moved in with me. If it wasn’t for the knowledge that I would immediately have four friends to rent rooms from me, I would not be able to afford the house, nor have enjoyed living in it. As well, I went into the house with the knowledge that I had four people in my life who supported me, loved me, and would see through these dreams of intentional living with me. I love the house that I live in and love the people that inhabit it with me. I will always be grateful that they made that possible for me.

So many things in my life were lining up the way that I wanted them. However, there was one major part of my life I couldn’t quite get to work. Work.

I am able to pay all of my bills and even have a little bit of extra money for fun and saving. However, there was nothing that was putting me on a steady path to have a stable career and have a family someday. As I believe I’ve mentioned before in my blog, I now romance about what it might be like to have a wife and kids and live in that house. I’ve realized that if I want my kids to eat, I would probably need a bit more money.

Money is not hard for me. I’m very good with money and I can usually find a way to get more of it. Money wasn’t the problem. The problem was stability. Trajectory. A path. Call it finding a career, shaking hands with people, moving up over the course of 30 years, and not hating it all the while. There’s no word for that? Hmm. Strange.

But I'm tired of waiting!

I could get back into finance, but I think I might rather get paid to go to the dentist every day. I was pretty good at teaching guitar and parents seemed to like me and I could continue building up clients. But that only solved the money problem, not the trajectory one.

Then it came to me like when you realize it’s raining. You may have felt the first raindrop 5 minutes ago and a few in between, but you really needed to feel the rain before you believed it was actually going to rain. The first drop is never enough. Plus, maybe it wasn’t even a raindrop to begin with.

I digress.

The thing that I loved most about teaching guitar was the one on one time. The personal and vulnerable interaction and somebody allowing me to connect with them on a deep level. I had thought about this for a long time but as I sat in the living room with Dave one night, it became very clear that I ought to go into counseling. Perhaps it helped to hear a close friend say that he thought that was exactly what I should be doing.

We mulled it over and the more we talked about it and thought about it, it was a perfect fit. Denver Seminary was about 3 miles south of my new house (I can even ride my bike along the river to get there) and they have a fantastic counseling program. I already lived with two people who had graduated from the program there and know a handful of other counseling graduates. Though it was already the middle of summer it was not too late for me to apply.

In addition to the time of schooling seeming to work out perfectly, it felt like the perfect career for me. The biggest reason being that when I thought about a career in psychology, it made me happy. It was the first time in years I was able to think about a job (besides professional basketball player) that I would be excited to go to. I took some time to pray, think, and discuss it all the while moving forward in the application process.

Several weeks went by and I was able to work with a fantastic admissions counselor. He completely understood my urgency in wanting to start classes this semester and moved the process along as quickly as possible.

I called up friends, asked for letters of recommendation, asked to have my entrance essay edited, and ordered my transcripts from undergrad (in which I coasted in hardly above a 3.0 just in case I ever wanted to go back to school, though I never thought I would... phew!). Thank you to all who helped me! Whether editing papers, writing references, talking with me, listening to me, or praying for me, thank you.

On July 24th I received word that I had been accepted into the program. I was excited, relieved, nervous, and hungry (always hungry) all at the same time.

Jump back to today. I am having coffee next door to the seminary at a little coffee shop I found that is just off the bike path. I will start classes on August 26th. I will be in school for the next 2.5 years putting me at 28 when I finish my masters and begin my career as a counselor.

So that’s where I am now. Three years into Denver, a couple jobs, a lot of questions, and a few answers. I am far from complete in my own personal journey. Two months shy of 26 I still have so much to figure out. However, I am so grateful to the Lord that I am able to put down one more building block in the foundation of my life.

I’ve committed to writing in here more. So subscribe to my blog if you want to keep up and journey along with me. I’m sure you’ll at least get a few laughs. Sometimes because I want you to laugh, others because you have made the same mistakes that I might currently be making, and others because you are figuring out the same things I am figuring out.

peace,

Colter

p.s. If you clicked on the link I emailed you because of the spoiler alert and found yourself not satisfied with the spoiler... Spoiler alert: Snape kills Dumbledore.

Finding Normal

At 25 I am finding myself to become more and more normal. Last night I had a dream that I was watching an episode of Modern Family and showing the show to a friend. That was my dream. That was my dream! To be fair, I did just get dish installed. They had a good deal going and the woman I talked to online could have sold me a cruise ship. She was that good. So I signed up. Why lie to myself, I love watching sports. It sort of bothers me that I have to pay $30 a month in order to have ESPN and ensure that the channels that already come over air just come in clear. But only sort of.

One time, shortly after I had graduated high school (I was either 18 or 19) I remember sitting next to a girl on the couch in her house. Her and I were in the same group of friends, all being Christians, all being radicals.

At that point in my life I had basically vowed to never be normal. I would live off some sort of poor salary, have homeless people sleep in my house, live in community, and probably spend 50 percent of my life overseas working with the abject poor and suffering.

I would never have the white picket fence, 9-5 job, collared shirt and comforts of suburban life. God had not called me to that and I never wanted it.

Back to the story. At one point in the night she turned to me and wondered if we were just young and foolish and someday we would realize that life was just about having kids, taking care of them, and getting through the daily grind. I can’t remember if I only thought this or said this but I was so sure she was wrong and went through all the details of why that was the case. That was before I really had any sort of filter so I am going to go with, “I let her know and then some.”

Years passed, I finished college, got a 9-5 job, got rid of the mohawk, learned how to wear nicer shoes, bought a house, and started attending a church where homeless people weren’t everywhere. Call it growing up? Selling out? Realizing what life is about? Forgetting what it is about? I think that 19 year old Colter had some things right. He definitely didn’t know how to present those ideas and pretty much always had the volume knob at 10 and turned the abrasiveness knob up to 11 because it felt good.

I don’t think I would mind if there was a white picket fence outside my house. Actually, I think it would look nice, it just wouldn’t really match the rest of my house, the main reason that I don’t have one. I work on my yard most days. I would create a ratio for amount of time I spend trying to further my career and taking care of the house to taking care of homeless people, but if we are using the criteria as the last 18 months then there really isn’t a ratio where the second number is 0. That’s the moment where computers get confused and say, “we can’t compute this, this isn’t math.” That’s how computers talk.

I am just starting my masters degree and now seeing what it looks like to have a career. Is 25 late for that? I think for my generation it’s probably about on par. I’m excited. When I mow my lawn I look at the big tree in my yard and think, “I hope that I get to build a treehouse with my kids here someday.” I romance about sipping coffee with my wife on the porch on the early hours of a Saturday morning.

I’m trying to learn what it looks like to have a heart after God and follow him radically. I’m locked into this house right now and have got a few years left of school so I hope those things fit in. I’ve started meeting with a man for breakfast who is literally three times my age. He’s been successful, loves the Lord, and I like him a lot. He’s sort of how I see myself in 50 years. If I have that much joy and energy for life at 75 then it will be a victory. Hell, if I had that much now I would be jazzed.

I don’t know where I’m going to land. I do know that I’m not trying to grow dreadlocks anymore (I gave that up when I found out how long it took). I suppose I should just continue to try and chase after Jesus. It can look a lot of different ways but I’m sure it will be exciting.

The Core of Creation

Perhaps it was the disappointment of tossing and turning the night of bringing home a new $1000 mattress that left me feeling the way I do today. Well, to be honest, the mattress isn’t really $1000. I got it for 400. It’s 1000 for the set but I didn’t need the box spring and I got it after somebody used it for some time less than 100 days. I suppose it wasn’t that great of a deal, but it was supposed to be a great mattress; though perhaps my preferences are not that of the ordinary when it comes to the position of one’s slumber. However, that probably has everything to do with nothing and was just something I felt like venting about.

Henry Miller said “The best way to get over a woman is to turn her into literature.” Ironically enough as I write, my way to get over a woman is to turn her into music but just as well, I currently have no woman that I need to get over. Somewhere at the root of our humanity, (perhaps at the masculine heart, though I don’t want to exclude women from this) we find great satisfaction at creating. Just as well, we find a similar satisfaction when is comes to destroying.

One time I noticed this while I was camping. My friends and I sat out to spend the night in the woods to celebrate our graduating from college. The idea of camping has always been a tad baffling to me. Why is it that we trade the comforts of our home for the discomforts or the woods? I have since learned how nurturing it is for the soul but at first glance, the idea of camping is a bit odd.

So we arrived at our campsite not long before dinner time and sunset. We had to create our site, build our tent, lay out our sleeping bags, get our stove and food set up, and perhaps most importantly, collect fire wood so we could stay warm, see, and cook our food. Something about that next hour gave everybody meaning and it seemed that everyone of us had decided that building a fire was perhaps the manliest thing you could do. You get to chop down trees, break branches, and then turn those things into a fire that takes care of you. You see, somewhere at the core of creation we find the need for destruction.

This brings me back to the Miller quote. He tells us that to get over a woman you must turn her into literature, which I am loosely interpreting as art. When we think of art we mostly think of creation. Taking a blank canvas, painting colors on it until we have created some sort of image in our mind. I might attest that most art comes at the expense of what has already been created. In the sense of getting over the woman you are not creating a piece of art. I believe that the balance lies further in the hands of destruction; destroying the feelings that you had for her and perhaps her image along the way. Most break up songs are written describing how terrible the other person turned out to be. In both ways you create a new image for this person but also destroy what their old image was, at least to you.

Though destruction is deemed as a negative concept, I would like to turn it into a positive one. A theme in my life that I am beginning to understand is that in order for a new self to be birthed a death to the old self must occur. My priest said that in order for him to become a married man he had to die to being a single man. In order to become a father he had to die to being a young adult.

This can go on and on and perhaps seems trite. I don’t think it is though. I think it is the very thing that we fear. Perhaps this is why so many marriages fail, because we never kill the single self. Sure, the married man and the single man can have certain things in common. Somewhere there exists a ven diagram of what a married man can do, what a single man can do, and what both can do. Different relationships vary but I’m sure there is some sort of ideal that exists to help marriages succeed. To kill the single self is to move completely out of that single circle and live fully in the married circle. Again, certain things may be able to come with but only if they already existed in the married circle.

The trick here, I’m sure is discerning what needs to be destroyed and what should not be destroyed. Satan is out there to destroy what is beautiful and Jesus is out there to destroy whatever is destroying us. Jesus said that whoever tries to hold on to his life will surely lose it and that whoever wants to live must die to himself.

Last night while I was playing volleyball at the park there was a storm for about 30 minutes, about an hour before sundown. As Denver does, the storm quickly passed and the clouds parted. Shortly after, there was the most beautiful sunset and two beautiful simultaneous rainbows. If you were parachuted into the scene it would have looked like a beautiful day without any weather. And for some reason, this thought lingered in my mind: At the core of creation we find destruction.

Overtipping at Subway

*I wrote this sometime in October of 2012*

I’ll never regret the $20 tip that I left for my 6 dollar subway sandwich. I had had a very long day and was heading home after music practice at around 9:45. I still hadn’t gotten dinner that night and was very hungry. Not terribly satisfied with the fact that Subway was about my only option, I went through the door to wait in line behind two women, who were ordering sandwiches. There was a girl working by herself. I quickly realized that she was probably less satisfied that she was closing up Subway at 10 pm than I was with the fact that I would be eating there for dinner.

Of course, I was engulfed in my iPhone checking to see if Reggie Bush had somehow scored a touchdown, as it would have had (very minimal) effect on my fantasy football match. I was awoken back to reality by the question “what kind of cheese do you want?” I looked up to her eye contact and felt really stupid for looking down at my phone while this young lady was just trying to make me a sandwich, whilst making two other sandwiches. She looked very haggard but her eyes didn’t tell me that she was complaining about the fact that she had to work. Perhaps my claims to being intuitive about people are just excuses to let me judge them.

I’m sure that Subway isn’t the worst job ever, but I imagined that this girl was about my age. I’m sure it’s a fine job for when you’re trying to make your way through school or something, but at the age of 25 it seems like there are so many other opportunities people would want to be taking advantage of. I’m definitely not judging her this time, who knows where her life has lead her?

Anyways, I live my life on a sort of modified cash budget. I pay for my groceries, bills, and gas all on my card, but any food I want to eat out, drinks I want to buy, or fun I want to have, I use cash. I put a certain amount of money in my wallet every Monday and when there is no more money, I don’t do any more things. Sometimes I break the rules a bit and will buy Sunday brunch on my debit card, but I often have to turn down fun when I’m out of money. I actually only had about 30 dollars left in my wallet on this night and there were still a few days left in the week, but I felt like this girl could maybe use something to brighten her evening.

I asked her, “Are you the only one left here tonight?” She replied that she was. I then gestured to the empty tip jar and said, “So you get all the tips?” She sort of smiled, laughing that there was no money in there. So I dropped my 20 dollar bill in the tip jar and wished her a good rest of her night. She was so contritely astounded. You see, I don’t live in the nicest area of town and I’m not sure that people with a lot of money are frequenting the Subway restaurants near my house, though I’m open to being wrong.  She said how I didn’t have to do that and how it was so nice and said “wow” in between about every one of those sentences. I didn’t want to make it a big deal so I smiled, said I insisted, and quickly left.

I know that 20 bucks isn’t a huge deal. It’s a bigger deal to me than a lot of people with better jobs than I have, but even to me it’s really not a huge deal, at least in the grand scheme of my life. I’m not going to look back in five years and say, I really could have used that 20 bucks! Not having that $20 has made money a little tighter for me this week. It’s a Saturday as I write this and I’m already planning on how I have to stay home tonight since I’m out of money! I wasn’t expecting God to somehow give me extra money since I was diligent with what I was given. In fact, I’ve actually had a few unexpected expenses come up in the past few days. What I do know, is that for a few moments on Thursday night I was able to write a good story for my life. Do I wish that I had $20 to go spend tonight on drinks and having fun with friends? Absolutely. But I guarantee that when I look back on this week, I won’t regret the fact that I had to stay home on Saturday night in order to give a 350% tip on my buffalo chicken sandwich.

Don't Call It a Comeback...I Never Left

Ok, actually I did leave. I haven't written here in a long time. Such a long time that my last post was on committing to a church that I am no longer committed to. It's not that there is anything wrong with the place, I suppose we just went in different directions.

I have written a fair amount in the last 18 months. I think I came to this place of feeling like if I couldn't blow anybody's mind then I wasn't doing it right. I am far from arrival when it comes to the destination of complete integration. I haven't started posting again because I have figured anything in my life out. I don't have a theme of what to write about such as musings on one that lives radically. Perhaps I'm beginning to find out that 25 yields much less knowledge then I was hoping for and more of a desire to learn.

 Like I said, I've written a fair amount in the last 18 months. I don't think I've come up with anything that nobody has ever though of before. I have found that I enjoy writing. When people ask me what I did on a morning that I had written and I told them I had been writing, they are usually surprised. I thought I would jump on the blog train again in hopes of quieting those surprises. I think it's good for any of us to keep the creative juices consistently flowing on regular basis.

I'm not committing to posting on any sort of regular basis. I've found that when I say, "I'm going to do this every monday whether you like it or not..." I end up not doing it. I'm still trying to get myself in the habit of doing shoulder rehab everyday. I'd just hope that this telling posting this one time might convince me to write a little bit more. I'd also hope that some of you might interact with me.

-Colter